Secretary of Defense Robert Gates plans to will raise questions at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo about how changes in geopolitics, global naval resourcing, the global economy may impact what programs the Navy builds in the future.

Gates confronts cost of new subs

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is planning to take aim next week at the Navy’s new multibillion-dollar ballistic missile submarine, a move some view as an implicit threat: Cut the sub, or I’ll do it myself.

Gates’s warning will come in a speech at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo, and while he won’t announce any specific budget decisions, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says Gates will raise questions about changes in geopolitics, global naval resourcing, the global economy and how those changes may impact what programs the Navy builds in the future.

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Any threat to cut the subs — which cost $7 billion apiece and would create plenty of jobs with defense contractors — is bound to stoke parochial tensions in Congress, especially with members who represent districts that build submarines. The new subs are planned to join the fleet starting in 2027, replacing existing Ohio-class missile subs.

Such strong words coming from Gates, who has cut Air Force fighter jets and helicopters, an Army combat system, missile defense programs and has fired two service secretaries and an Air Force chief of staff, are viewed in the defense community with great caution. This particular future submarine program is valued by Navy leadership and closely watched by members of Congress who rally to defend the shipbuilding industrial base.

Based on Gates’ track record, this seems to be a signal to the Navy to cut the program before he has to, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst for the Heritage Foundation. And this will be hard for the “small and exclusive club” of submariners, who are seeing their beloved undersea ships closed to smoking and opened to women. “It’s a community at a crossroads,” she said.

Gates has warned in the past about the projected cost of the future submarine, a program that will start in fiscal year 2011.

“When that program really begins to ramp up, in the latter part of this decade, it will suck all the air out of the Navy's shipbuilding program,” Gates told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee in March. “And so some tough choices are going to have to be made, either in terms of more investment or choices between the size of surface fleets you want and the submarine fleets.”

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus acknowledged recently that "it takes a pretty big chunk out of the rest of the fleet, including other submarines.”

But the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan has attempted to be realistic about the cost of the new sub and the size of future budgets for ships, something the Navy has avoided in the past, he said.

“I think we’ve got to take a look at how we do this — what the cost is, what the type of ship is,” Mabus told the Defense Writers Group. “One of the reasons we put it in was to start that discussion start the debate.”

Congress has already been debating the issue, but answers have proved elusive.

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee, has said the new submarine is being designed just to fit the Trident missile. He’s asking whether a new, smaller missile could be designed for use on other submarines.

But that raises a host of strategic questions, given the Trident’s nuclear capabilities — especially because the Nuclear Posture Review endorsed a sea-based deterrent, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) told POLITICO.

“It would be illogical to say that the program should be eliminated or scaled back,” said Courtney, in whose district Virginia-class submarines are built. “The solution obviously is to figure out a way to increase the shipbuilding budget or put funding for that program in its own national security account.”